Protest
Fossil Fuel’s war on protest
Madeleine King, Minister for Resources in the Albanese government recently announced that she will curtail the ability of Australians to challenge resource corporation projects in court (The West Australian 26/3/24). She has several possible motivations which just might include the prospect of a lucrative post-politics career. This attack on democratic rights is built on decades…
The post Fossil Fuel’s war on protest appeared first on The AIM Network.
Pics/vid: Liverpool comes out three times for Gaza – Grand National, city and Waterloo
City sees whole weekend of solidarity and activism
Liverpool and Merseyside saw a whole weekend of solidarity with the Palestinians against Israel’s genocide over the last couple of days – beginning with a demonstration at Aintree racecourse for the Grand National.
Protesters, including members of Merseyside’s Jewish community, received a positive reaction from most racegoers as they braved windy weather to wave banners and Palestinian flags:
Sunday saw a large march through the city centre – numbers that have remained undiminished through the long months of Israel’s ongoing war crimes against Palestinian civilians – including a group of women holding ‘bloodied’ bundles representing the around eighteen thousand children murdered in Gaza:
And on Sunday night, around a hundred activists – gathered at Da Gurka restaurant in Waterloo to share food, lift spirits and raise thousands of pounds for Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Israel is losing the PR war badly, its murderousness and arrogance as it slaughters tens of thousands of civilians, mostly women and children, and tries to starve two million more, appalling the world and prompting millions to turn out on the streets every week. The flailing of its far-right regime is now putting the whole world in danger as it tries to provoke a regional war and bring the US into open aggression against the Muslim nations around it.
Free Palestine. Justice for Gaza and the West Bank.
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Exclusive: Unite officers accuse Graham & team of breaching collective to ‘crush’ staff
National Officers’ group complains to exec and legal about ‘anti-trade union’ actions, intimidation by union management and breach of collective agreement
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham and her management team have been accused of contempt for Unite staff’s collective agreement on grievances – and of a string of other abuses, including the use of legal action to silence and intimidate workers and avoid transparency, banning workers from their workplace under an implied threat of dismissal – and putting people into ‘special measures’ to control the union’s internal democracy.
A damning letter from Unite’s ‘Officers’ National Committee’ (ONC) explains that the group has been forced to take the ‘unprecedented’ step of going outside the usual collective agreement to notify the union’s elected executive and its legal director of their grievance, in the hope of getting some action to resolve the grim situation. It then goes on to outline the serious abuses they say they are facing – and to imply that if they are not resolved, staff will be balloted for strike action:
ONC Collective Grievance over Unite management’s interpretation of the Unite Grievance Collective Agreement and the Dignity At Work Collective Agreement.
A Collective Grievance under section 5 of the Unite Grievance Collective Agreement is required to be presented to the Director of Human Resources however because our Collective Grievance is about the way Procedures are being interpreted and changed and how the content of the employees’ grievances necessitates additionally an unprecedented involvement of the Legal Director and the senior lay officials of the Executive Council.
The ONC feels justified in making this decision because repeated representations are getting us nowhere. If employees cannot feel that the Grievance Collective Agreement is to be respected by the Union then as trade unionists we know how to respond. But out of respect for our members and to provide the Executive Council, as the ultimate employing body, with the opportunity to hear our concerns that the rights and protections of Unite workers are being undermined and denied we want to avoid a dispute.
The length of time that grievances and investigations are taking to reach a conclusion is not acceptable in a modern workplace. When employees are waiting months after submitting a grievance due to a refusal of some to participate in the process, being banned from your workplace when not even suspended, and an application of “special measures” to distort democratic structures – none of these are acceptable or are in the traditions of Unite.
The use of suspension powers should only be used with clear justification and always with a review to evaluate the impact of suspension on an individual’s mental health before the suspension stretches to weeks and months.
Using legal privilege to justify enforcing a refusal to allow an employee to present their grievance is disgraceful and anti-trade union. If we believe that part of our role is to challenge power in the workplace where that power is used to suppress workers seeking transparency, expressing their genuinely held views or seeking protection from abuse.
Threats of legal action for raising a grievance cannot be ignored or endorsed. It is contrary to ACAS guidance, a breach of our collective agreement on grievance and Dignity At Work and a denial of natural justice. For any worker to exhibit the courage to voice their concerns about their opinions of inappropriate behaviour against them or others is a right not to be denied. If it is to be crushed or swept away simply because the employer is more powerful and we do nothing about such unfairness in the workplace then who are we standing up for?
In seeking to declare a grievance invalid the employer has cited the issues of trust and confidence. This, in our view, is a further matter of deep and unprecedented concern. Loss of trust and confidence is a legitimate reason for dismissal by an employer so to reference it is to further intimidate the worker. Its use by our management is nonsensical since by definition any grievance is reliant upon trusting your employer to investigate and adjudicate on the matters raised.These concerns raised by the ONC are based on the senior management team of the union having agreed them which is why in our view the Executive Council is the only body that can hold a special meeting to restore the integrity of the Collective Agreements entered into with the Bargaining Units of the Unite workforce.
We want the following as the resolution to our Collective Grievance. 1) All grievances raised by employees in the union should be investigated, with Unite as our employer honouring its’ obligations by following collective agreements with the bargaining units. 2) The senior management team should work constructively with the ONC to establish a new protocol to ensure grievance and disciplinary investigations should be carried out in an appropriate and timely manner to balancing the right to be heard and natural justice alongside resolving issues that lead to investigations.
Emphases added by Skwawkbox
The explosive allegations compound the long list of alleged issues with Graham’s running of Unite. Her tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in a defamation lawsuit, and a tribunal case for discrimination, brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
She has also been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive earlier this month. She campaigned for the general secretary position on the basis of a focus on protecting workers and disavowing political interference.
A senior union insider told Skwawkbox:
The Exec would never normally get involved in employee management matters. They would never usually get involved in employee grievances. The officers have emailed them directly to basically say we are getting nowhere with this general secretary, she is out of control using the worst of employer tactics against union employees, we know you don’t deal with our grievances but you are the union’s ultimate body and we are saying to you – do something or we will ballot.
Unite was contacted for comment:
- It’s clear from this that ONC feels trust has broken down between Unite staff and its management – how has Ms Graham allowed things to fall apart so badly?
- Unite would never – I hope – tolerate another employer treating staff in this manner, so why is Unite doing so?
- What is Ms Graham’s explanation for trying to declare grievances invalid rather than resolving them – especially (and ironically) on grounds that ‘trust and confidence’ in the person(s) making the grievance(s) are the issue, which employees are regarding as attempted intimidation?
- The ONC says that Unite is using legal privilege as an excuse for preventing workers from presenting grievances. Is this true?
The union did not respond by the deadline for publication.
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Video: friend of Israel Hodge says ‘very few dare’ in Labour to support Palestine
Newly-uncovered video from Labour’s last conference shows shocking comment – and Hodge falsely claiming fellow right-winger Luciana Berger needed ‘police protection’ to move around 2018 conference
A Times Radio video clip reveals right-wing Labour MP Margaret Hodge – who has continued to accept funds from Labour Friends of Israel to visit the country even during Israel’s genocide of Palestinians – telling interviewer John Pienaar that ‘very very few’ people within the Labour party ‘are daring to express support’ for Palestinians.
The clip, which does not appear to have been circulated before now, was posted by Steve Powers after he found it couched in a much longer video from the Murdoch station. Hodge then goes on to repeat the long-debunked claim, still (of course) widely circulated by right-wingers and the so-called ‘mainstream’ media, that former Labour/Tinge party/LibDem MP Luciana Berger needed a police escort to ‘get around’ the 2018 party conference, the last one she had attended before deserting the party:
Merseyside Police confirmed at the time that there was no special police detail for Berger, whom Keir Starmer has welcomed back into the party despite her efforts to prevent a Labour victory in 2019.
But even more damning is the arrogance of the claim – no doubt accurate under Starmer’s Stalinist, pro-genocide regime – just as Israel was preparing to launch its genocide, that ‘very very few’ would now ‘dare’ to show support for Palestinians.
Within the rotting shell that now passes for Labour, that may be correct – but the millions marching every weekend for freedom for Palestinians and an end to Israel’s war crimes make clear that Starmer’s Labour, like the blue version of the Tories, is utterly out of touch with the three quarters of the UK public who despise the murderousness that has killed and maimed more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, and the apartheid states’s contempt for international law and want the genocide to end.
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Cartoon: If media talked about the donor class the way it talks about college students
Cartoon by Jen Sorensen.
Donors sympathetic to reactionary-right ideology and their pet pundits have created a cottage industry of bashing college students with negative stereotypes.
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Unite 4 Gaza slams Graham’s ‘extraordinary’ attack on anti-genocide campaigners
Letter from ‘war monger’ attempting to justify her conduct and silence continues to backfire as anti-genocide group condemns betrayal of Palestinian civilians and of workers and movement
Unite members who have formed a group to campaign against Israel’s genocide in Gaza have written a response to the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham’s letter last week attempting to justify her lack of action to support Palestinians:
Response to the Statement by Sharon Graham on Palestine
On 26 March Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of Unite, and Andy Green, Chair of the Executive, issued an extraordinary statement attacking Palestine solidarity supporters. In particular it attempted to justify the leadership’s refusal to give any support to the Palestinians or Unite members campaigning to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
When Israel launched its attack on Gaza Unite issued a statement on 16 October which ‘unreservedly’ condemned and expressed its ‘revulsion’ over Israeli deaths on October 7 whilst merely ‘deploring’ the mass murder of women and children in Gaza.
It was only after concerted protests by Unite activists that after 4 weeks Unite issued a second statement on 3 November calling for an ‘immediate unconditional ceasefire by all parties in Israel and Gaza.’ There was no mention of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.
Since then there has been radio silence. There has been no publicity about the national demonstrations and no support for members wanting to take solidarity action. Despite repeated protests and petitions by members Sharon Graham has failed to attend or speak at the national demonstrations. Graham even tried to persuade Peter Kavanagh of London & Eastern Region not to speak.
Unite did absolutely nothing until a letter was sent on 25 March to the Palestinian trade union PGFTU, whose offices in Gaza had been bombed more than two weeks previously on 7 March. The timing of this letter was no coincidence. It was sent one day before her statement.
The letter offered nothing but empty words. Graham and Green are explicit in their opposition to an arms embargo on Israel or persuading workers to refuse to handle arms intended for genocide.
Graham’s letter referred to Unite’s ‘longstanding policy’ but fails to mention that Unite policy includes ‘full support for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’. This policy does not even appear on Unite’s website. For that you have to go to the United Left site.
Graham boasts that ‘Unite was the first major union to publicly and unambiguously call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.’ This is not true. UNISON called for an immediate ceasefire on 26 October and on 18 October condemned Israel’s attack on the Al Ahli hospital killing nearly 500 people.
Graham has remained silent about the attacks on Gaza’s hospitals, ambulances and health care system and now its execution of children at Al Shifa Hospital.
The remainder of Sharon Graham’s letter represents a disgraceful defence of the arms industry and an attack on those who seek to ‘to undermine the defence industry or demand the disbandment of NATO and AUKUS.’ It is an industry whose purpose includes enabling genocide in Gaza and a possible nuclear war with China and Russia.
Sharon Graham has openly come out as a war monger who hides her aims behind the need to preserve jobs at any cost. We reject the argument that Unite must support war because our members’ jobs depend on it. A society where an increasing proportion of national wealth is geared to the manufacture of armaments is to the detriment of all our members.
When imperialism wages war it is workers who lose their lives. Yes there is a contradiction between representing members in the war industry and opposing imperialist wars. That is why we support the diversification of arms production into making useful goods that benefit humanity.
The idea that we must defend every job, even when it involves the murder of thousands of children is one we reject. Trade unions have historically fought for peace not war, against fascism, imperialism and racism.
Sharon Graham spits on the memory of the Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride who, in 1973, refused to work on the engines of Chilean aircraft which had taken an active part in Pinochet’s fascist coup. A strong trade union organisation ensured that the Chilean airforce was all but grounded. Eventually it fell to Israel and South Africa to service these aircraft.
International solidarity is in the interests of all workers. Without solidarity the capitalist class can play divide and rule. Rather than building solidarity across national borders Sharon Graham prefers to play the role of a British nationalist wedded to Zionism.
Arms production is highly capital intensive. Britain’s ‘defence’ budget has steadily increased at the same time as cuts to the NHS and social services budgets. UNITE also has workers in the NHS, local government and social services. Unite members also use the NHS and are being forced to wait longer for treatment because of the cuts that enable increased military expenditure.
UNITE and its predecessor unions have a proud tradition of international solidarity. Former General Secretary of the TGWU, Jack Jones, fought in Spain against the fascists. At the time of Apartheid in South Africa we supported the struggle for liberation. An injury to one is an injury to all. We live in a society in which war is in the interests of capitalism not the working class.
Sharon Graham’s statement is an open declaration of war against those who support BDS and the liberation of the Palestinian people. The liberation of the Palestinians from Israeli Apartheid and an end to imperialist war is in the interests of all members of Unite.
Sharon Graham asserts that we are a trade union not a political party. Trade unions have historically recognised that strikes alone are not enough. We cannot achieve our economic aims without a political struggle for socialism. The NHS would never have been created if Graham’s miserable, short-sighted, dog eat dog vision had been adopted.
Today the Labour Party has abandoned the working class and embraced the neo-liberal advocates of free market capitalism. About this Graham has nothing to say.
Implicit in Graham’s statement is a threat to the affiliation to Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Already the affiliation to StWC has been suspended.
We call on Unite to break from Keir Starmer’s support for genocide, his embrace of NATO and neo-liberal economics and to fight for a socialist society which is free from the fear of war. We salute those who have campaigned to close Israel’s arms factories in Britain and we particularly welcome the closure of Elbit’s factory in Tamworth as a result of Palestine Action’s campaign.
See also Labour CND statement: why Unite the Union is wrong to attack groups picketing weapons manufacturing companies.
Unite 4 Palestine
1st April 2024
Unite was contacted for comment and given a copy of the statement, but did not respond.
In addition to the issues raised by Unite 4 Gaza, Sharon Graham has been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive earlier this month.
According to human rights group Euro Med Monitor, since 7 October last year Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than double that number, overwhelmingly women and children and many of them with life-changing injuries, while Gaza’s health and school systems have been bombed into collapse, often using US- and UK-made weapons and systems. More than a million people have been forcibly displaced and Gaza is in famine because of Israel’s blockade of food and vital supplies. Israel is formally on trial for genocide before the International Court of Justice and ordered to stop its slaughter – and has been found by UN human rights investigators to be committing genocide.
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‘A Keir Starmer Government Will Trigger a Revival of the Labour Left’
Owen Jones’ resignation from the Labour party and his proposal for a form of tactical voting to support Greens has brought the subject of the left’s relationship to the Labour Party to a very wide audience. A debate that is usually reserved for the pages of left journals, or among the left on social media, has received much wider attention.
Questions of whether the left should be in or out of Labour have been building for some time. From Jeremy Corbyn's suspension from the party, right through to Labour’s appalling position on Gaza, anger and disaffection has deepened. In some quarters there are arguments against any kind of Labour vote at all, although this is not what Jones himself has said.
Yet while the debate is real, the other side of the discussion is the unarguable fact that Labour is ahead in the polls and will likely form the next Government.
There is no groundswell of warmth and support for the Labour leader. Rejection of the Conservatives, rather than untrammelled enthusiasm for Labour, is driving Labour’s huge poll leads. Straightforward class instinct leads millions of people to reject the Conservatives, who are now widely and deeply disliked. For many, Labour is the only available mechanism to remove the Conservative party from government.
Even if there proves to be a degree of fragmentation in sections of the Labour vote, leading to some independents and Greens winning seats, the overall line of march is towards a Starmer Government. But until that happens, politics in Britain is in a long intermission in which everyone knows the Conservatives are going to lose and the only question is when and by how much.
This impasse in British society is also reflected in the politics of the labour movement.
One principal exception to the impasse is the dynamic pro-Palestine mobilisation against Israel’s killing in Gaza, which has reshaped the politics of protest on a sustained basis.
For now though, with the election in abeyance, we are at peak Starmer. The Labour leadership dominates the party’s central apparatus, which it has used to clamp down on debate, block candidates for selection and withdraw the whip from left-wing MPs. Policy formation has excluded major spending commitments, and thereby debate about the economy outside Rachel Reeves’ 'Securonomics' framework. Even on that narrow basis Labour voluntarily reined itself in further, gutting its own Green Prosperity Plan. But as long as Labour is in opposition there is a tendency to give the party the benefit of the doubt. Some of the more breathless responses to Reeves’ Mais lecture are an example of that.
Labour’s proposed supply-side reforms as a precursor to growth are not a sufficient platform to cope with either the immediate spending pressures built up over years of austerity, nor with the major challenge of the climate crisis. Labour’s plans are reliant on increased private investment whereas public investment is woefully low. As the Resolution Foundation has pointed out, the average OECD country invests nearly 50% more than the UK. Stagnant wages and the attack on disposable household income amount to a massive bottle neck of pressure for higher living standards and improved pay. Many local councils are in crisis. Once in power a Labour Government will face a tension between tight spending, self-imposed rejection of a variety of higher tax options, and the pent-up problems of immediate living standards. What Labour proposes is not equal to the scale of the task it will inherit.
But while there is a mismatch between the needs of the population and the solutions on offer, the real argument about that is not going to move beyond its current terms in any fundamental manner until the blockage of the general election is out of the way. Thus however contradictory it may seem, the formation of a Labour government under the politics of the Starmer leadership is now an essential step in breaking down the dominance of those politics within the labour movement and wider population.
Since Starmer is a leader pursuing a right-wing Labour course it is necessary for that course to first be exposed to the reality of its limitations in office, so his programme and its weaknesses can seen by the largest number of people for what they are.
Until Labour is in office Starmer will continue to be the beneficiary of anti-Conservative sentiment and will receive benefit of the doubt, including within Labour’s own base. Testing the Labour right’s agenda against the realities of power will move the political discourse on from the impasse and the question of getting a Labour government, and onto concrete questions of what the Government should do over living standards, public services and inequality.
Of course this being a Labour Government in waiting, there will still be differences with the Conservatives even under self-imposed constraints. Measures such as the New Deal for Working People, the extension of public ownership for the railways, and some of the remaining green agenda are bound to be opposed within and without the next Government. Figures such as Peter Mandelson, who have sought to water down elements of Labour’s programme, will continue to do so.
But it would be wrong for the left to draw the conclusion that these policies in themselves are sufficient justification for Labour’s otherwise limited package. In its totality the Labour leadership’s trajectory is wholly inadequate to the scale of the problems faced by a majority of the population, and will place the Labour Government in deep contradiction with the needs of working class people. At the same time, a renewed Labour Atlanticism, on display most obviously over Gaza, is bound to draw continued opposition.
We do not have to wait to see what opposition to Labour’s foreign policy means. Mass mobilisation over Gaza and the pro-Palestine movement has completely shaken up a sense that the Labour leadership is impervious to any opposition. The new politics under a Labour Government will not only be fought through the institutions of the labour movement, but also on the streets. A new left politics under a Labour Government will also raise questions about the degree to which the left and the unions are able to work more closely with each other. An inability to do so would give the Labour right more room to manoeuvre than it would otherwise enjoy.
The right of the party knows full well that once in office it will face pressure to go further, or alter course altogether, which is one of the principal reasons for its efforts to immunise the parliamentary party from the left. As the limits of the Labour Government’s programme are tested so there is every likelihood of a radicalisation among at least some sections of society on both domestic and international agendas.
For all the efforts of the leadership of the Labour party to protect itself from this, some elements of that political radicalisation will work their way through Labour and the unions, including those affiliated with the Labour Party. Other movements will be entirely distinct or new.
As the formation of a Labour Government under Starmer brings the present impasse to an end, the tensions at the heart of its project will be laid bare. When that happens, the conditions for the left to rise again will be formed.
In pictures: Liverpool turns out in force for Gaza
Large gathering dominates famous station frontage as crowd chants for an end to Israel’s genocide
Hundreds turned out on Easter Saturday to demonstrate at Liverpool’s famous Lime Street Station today to demand an end to Israel’s genocide and war crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The first real spring day did justice to the banners and flags and the large crowd was supplemented by passers-by as shoppers paused to find out more and then join in:
Liverpool Community Independents leader Alan Gibbons is a stalwart of the Gaza protests
Liverpool women hold ‘babies’ to symbolise Israel’s slaughter of Gaza’s children
The protest came in a week where a growing number of countries reinstated their support for the UN’s Gaza relief agency UNRWA – and as Ireland, the ancestral home of so many scousers, announced that it would formally join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
According to human rights agency Euro Med Monitor, Israel has already killed well over 40,000 civilians in Gaza, mostly women and children, and has wounded and maimed at least twice that number, with the death toll now accelerating even further as the famine imposed by Israel on Gaza’s two million plus inhabitants bites. Israel continues to flout international law and is now ignoring the International Court of Justice’s orders to allow immediate, unfettered, mass access of humanitarian aid and has blocked UNRWA’s access to distribute and deliver, while allowing far-right Israeli groups to block shipments and using starvation as a weapon.
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Students occupy Bristol uni building in protest at ‘profits from genocide’
Students demand divestment and an end to academic ties
Bristol University students have taken control of one of the university’s Wills Memorial Building in a protest to demand an end to its ‘complicity with arms companies’ and to call for a series of actions on its part to ‘support Palestine and Palestinians’:
The demanded actions include:
- an end to cooperation with weapons manufacturers
- protection for Palestinian students and special consideration for those taking exams who have been affected by Israel’s slaughter in Gaza
- protection for anti-Zionist beliefs among staff and students – an issue on which Bristol university has a shameful record and has been the scene of intense pressure campaigns by pro-Israel groups claiming that anti-Zionism, opposition to the settler-colonial state that has displaced Palestinians and treats them as inferior
- recognition of the existence of Palestine – an existence denied by hardcore supporters of Israel
- scholarships for Palestinian refugees
Israel has killed over forty thousand Palestinian civilians, more than two thirds of them women and children, and injured twice as many, in its genocidal assault on Gaza and has ignored orders from the International Court of Justice to cease its slaughter and allow food, fuel and medicines into Gaza immediately. Gaza is now in famine, with experts predicting that more will die in the coming months from hunger and disease than from Israel’s bombs, missiles and bullets, with children again worst affected.
Palestinian flags can be seen through the Wills building’s doors. The figures in the second image have been blurred to protect identities.
The group is also demanding an end to the use of a ‘check-in’ system that tracks the location of students.
Wednesday’s action is not the first by Bristol students demanding justice for Palestinians and an end to discrimination against them and their supporters. Four months ago, students protested in the university’s ‘profits from genocide’:
And earlier this month, a group occupied Bristol University’s Victoria Rooms in a pro-Gaza protest.
The British government has mounted a pressure campaign against universities, threatening to defund them if they allow ‘extremism’ or ‘antisemitism’ in the form of pro-Palestinian speech and activism. Shamefully, a number of universities have capitulated to pressure from the UK state and from pro-Israel groups claiming that speech against Israel’s crimes and occupation of Palestinian land infringe on their rights and constitutes ‘hate’ toward Jews, even though many UK Jews oppose Israel’s actions and oppression of Palestinians.
Last month, former Bristol professor David Miller won a landmark employment tribunal case against the university, which had sacked him after pressure from pro-Israel groups, despite lawyers it appointed to run two investigations finding that he had said nothing antisemitic. The win set a precedent that anti-Zionist political beliefs are a protected characteristic under equalities law and cannot be used as grounds for dismissal. Skwawkbox understands that Prof Miller is not involved in the students’ protest.
Solidarity with students in Bristol and elsewhere who are demanding an end to complicity in war crimes.
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